Tag Archives: software

Emacs: The Poster Child for Software Bloat

Posted on April 1, 2012 by romkey

I love Emacs. It’s the editor I grew up with. I’ve been using it for over 30 years. I don’t think I could switch to another editor now if I wanted to. There’s even an excellent GUI port of it … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers, Software | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Whenever I Go Away, I Want to Start Anew…

Posted on May 13, 2009 by romkey

There’s a thrill for me in the initial exploration of an idea, the initial design of a piece of software or web site, and in learning how to use new tools or pieces of software to build the thing that I want to build.

… I don’t hate that part of the work but it isn’t nearly as interesting to me and it’s hard for me to get up the motivation to do it, especially when I have a head full of other ideas to work on. However, getting over that hump and dealing with the issues that arise as a site begins running and getting users, or a piece of software starts to get used by others – that captures my interest again – maybe not quite as much as the initial phase, but there are new problems and there are always unforeseen developments when other people start using a thing that one person has labored over on their own. … I’m sitting in a hotel today having a very nice relaxing day away from home, and thankfully today’s idea for something new is blocked by a lack of good domain names for it (rather than a surplus of self-control). Continue reading →

Posted in Code, Computers | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Showing a Column as a UNIX Timestamp in MySQL

Posted on October 5, 2008 by romkey

While MySQL has quite an assortment of date and time formats which it supports, I usually find it most convenient to store timestamps as an INT and just put the UNIX seconds since the epoch value in there. … A drawback is that sometimes when I’m working with the database by hand it’s annoying to see the timestamps as big numbers – sometimes it would be very helpful to see them as dates and times. … The “FROM_UNIXTIME()” function will interpret a numeric column’s value as a UNIX seconds-from-the-epoch value and show it as a date and timestamp. Using it I can easily do things like: SELECT URL, FROM_UNIXTIME(Timestamp) FROM AccessLog; and see it as: +—————————+————————–+ | URL | FROM_UNIXTIME(timestamp) | +—————————+————————–+ | explore/users/94 | 2008-10-05 22:49:39 | +—————————+————————–+ rather than +—————————+————+ | URL | timestamp | +—————————+————+ | explore/users/94 | 1223261379 | +—————————+————+ Continue reading →

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MacOS X DVDs – Versions and Saving a Little Money on Them

Posted on October 5, 2008 by romkey

The family pack is licensed for use for up to five machines in one household, and lists for $199, a pretty good deal for staying legal at less than the cost of two single user licenses. … At the time I wrote this, they were charging $26 less than list for the single user edition and $44.51 less than list for the family pack , both with free shipping. … You should be forewarned that, in my experience, the restore DVD that comes with a computer will only work with that computer or class of computers. … Amazon also has a pretty good deal on Leopard Server: $104.51 off the 10 user version (normal list price $499) and $168.46 off the unlimited user version (normal list price $999). Continue reading →

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